Laptops, Netbooks, Notebooks, NetTops, Eee PC, SmartTops, Mobile PC, Tablet PC

Dell has been on good form recently, releasing a wealth of great laptops. And, while the Inspiron 15R has been around for six months now; it’s still a good choice thanks to the strong performance, usability and design.

If the Inspiron 15R has a flaw, it’s the lack of portability thanks to its rather chunky measurements and 2.7kg weight. You’ll be able to fit it into your laptop bag, but the extra weight is noticeable. Still, we feel that despite its proportions, the Inspiron 15R has a nice design.

It features Dell’s SWITCH interchangeable lids, meaning if you don’t like the pattern on the top of the machine you can buy a different one and simply switch it round. A neat idea, except for the fact that each lid retails for around £30 – far too much in our opinion.

The rest of the laptop chassis is a glossy black with a large touchpad and a comfortable isolation-style keyboard. Although the keyboard flexes during typing, the keys are well-sized with a decent amount of travel. A small touch is labeling the uppermost F-keys that double as shortcut functions in orange. This stands out against the black keyboard and makes altering volume or brightness a quick and easy experience.

If you’re after a machine to play Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3, look no further. The Asus G74S is a mammoth gaming laptop, which has the power to play all the latest titles, and while you might not get as much for your money when compared with full form desktops, it’s up there with the best.

Buying a gaming laptop offers fantastic pay offs in terms of space and portability. If you don’t have room for a hulking desktop system, or like to have the option of taking your laptop away from your home, the Asus G74S is perfect. Read the rest of this entry »

The Compaq Presario CQ57-366SA won’t win any awards for its looks, but does offer the things we look for in a budget machine. It’s solid with a decent screen and great speakers, and the sort of internal specifications we’d expect at this price.

However, even though this is a budget machine, we’d still appreciate something a little nicer to look at. The Compaq is a solid black brick seemingly devoid of colors, shades or textures. It’s boring and uninspired but, as mentioned above, solidly built -with only a small amount of flex detectable around the chassis. We were also pleased to discover that it’s not as heavy as it looks, weighing in at a comfortable 2.5kg.

Leaving the aesthetics behind, usability is perfectly acceptable. The keyboard has wide buttons and a good depth of travel but, despite the amount of space on the chassis, feels cramped. There’s no numeric keypad or quick-access hotkeys to be found, but, like most laptops, you can alter volume and media playback by holding down the Function key and using the F-keys. While the touchpad is responsive, it’s also the exact same shade of black as the rest of the chassis and therefore wonderfully camouflaged. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 is a perfectly capable machine that will offer basic users the experience they are looking for at a bargain price. We can’t help but notice its shortcomings – such as battery life – when compared with some of the other machines in this group test, so we’d only recommend it if you’re on a very strict budget. The Lifebook AH530’s design is unremarkable but sufficient.

There’s a glossy black shine to the lid that looks good but may prove susceptible to marks and scratches. The polished black design continues inside, where it has been applied to the palm rest. Even though we weren’t enamored with the design, this Fujitsu does feel solidly built, with very little flex around the keyboard or the optical drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Toshiba’s all-conquering Qosmio range was the first to bring us glasses-free 3D, and we were so impressed with the X770 back in issue 156 that we awarded it five stars. The Qosmio F750 continues the tradition, albeit with a couple of drawbacks. The substandard keyboard and paltry battery life might put some off, but anyone looking for a movie powerhouse won’t fail to be impressed.

The bright red outer design is eye-catching and complemented by the glossy all-black look under the lid. White LEDs around the touchpad, power button and hotkeys also add a bit of visual flair. Unsurprisingly though, it’s neither light nor svelte. Measuring in at 386 x 265 x 39mm with a weight of 3.2kg the Qosmio is more of a desk-based PC replacement than a portable gaming machine. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rock Xtreme 685 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. With its matte-black design, rubberized coating and sharp angles it looks like any self-respecting mature laptop. There’s even a fingerprint scanner sitting between the mouse buttons, which you’d expect to see on a businessman’s machine.

Don’t be fooled: this is a custom-made gaming monster with enough power to keep its owner playing long after other machines have given up and gone home. Not literally, mind – the battery life’s only 96 minutes. However, in those 96 minutes, you will have power courtesy of a quad-core Intel Core i7-2860QM CPU and an AMD Radeon HD 6990M graphics card assisted by 6GB of RAM. Read the rest of this entry »

With its massive 18.4-inch screen and total weight of nearly 4kg, Acer’s Aspire Ethos 8951G isn’t the kind of laptop you’re going to carry around much – unless you happen to have a crush on a nurse in your local spinal injuries ward, that is. But if you plan on leaving it one place most of the time, it’s awesome.

The 8951G has two massive selling points. Firstly, it’s a fine desktop replacement. The quad core processor and vast amount of storage mean it’s a better performer than most PCs. You just need to glance at the performance benchmarks to realize how much faster than any of the dual core Sandy Bridge laptops this is.

The top-of-the-range Sandy Bridge Core i7 chip can handle the latest games and high-definition movies. If you’re a creative type who spends their time editing and rendering HD movies, or using complex software, this level of power is essential.

The screen is more than comfortable enough for working on for long periods of time, too, and there’s plenty of extra power to drive a second monitor if you want.

Its second raison d’etre is to replace your entertainment devices. And we mean all of them. For starters, there’s all that hard drive space; perfect for storing lots of videos and music. Then there are the above par speakers – you could easily watch a movie on this laptop and enjoy both the sounds and sights that HD has to offer. This is thanks to a built-in subwoofer for decent audio and a high-contrast screen capable of the inkiest blacks that the Blu-ray drive can throw at it.

Its neatest trick, though, is the detachable mouse pad. If you’ve left the 8581G plugged into your TV for example, you can simply remove the track pad and watch as it doubles up into a wireless media remote. A small button in one comer lights up standard playback controls and converts the multitouch sensor into a fully functioning remote.

But what’s most surprising about this notebook is its battery life. The cell itself isn’t easily accessible, but in our tests it kept the Aspire going for over three hours – unusual for a large laptop like this.

The battery life is helped by the fact that the 8951G can, like the Dell XPS 14z, switch between the low power Intel graphics and a higher performing Nvidia chip at will. That gives it by far the best games performance on test here, and this Acer is quite capable of playing most games at reasonable graphics settings. It is also worth pointing out that if your sole purpose for buying a laptop is to play games, MSI and Samsung both have slightly smaller models with far better graphics capabilities at similar price points.

With its EasyNote TS13-HR-038UK, Packard Bell has created a big, colorful and well-built laptop for just north of £400. Call us suspicious, but the question we instantly ask is, ‘what’s it left out?’ Fortunately, the answer is ‘not a lot’; it’s actually startling how much has been left in.

For starters, this EasyNote is a looker for a family-oriented machine. The smooth surface isn’t too glossy, thanks to a patterned design laid on, and while the base is a bit plasticky it’s far from offensive. All the essentials are right: a solid keyboard; near-frictionless mouse pad (if a bit cramped) and a screen that doesn’t wobble around when you start to type.

That screen is huge for the money too and comfortable for running 720p movies or playing the occasional game. Its resolution is a little low for such a large desktop area, which does make text and icons overly large and a little childlike.

That said, it’s a far more vibrant and color accurate panel than you’ll often get for twice the price. The screen is often the first thing to suffer when it comes to cost cutting, but this EasyNote beats the Zenbook UX31 for visual punch, even if it doesn’t have the deep blacks of the Acer 8951G.

Fresh from Lenovo’s IdeaPad stable is the Lenovo Z570 which manages to hit a great balance between power and price.

It comes with a Sandy Bridge processor and dedicated graphics card, but costs less than many rivals with similar specs. Both usability and the build quality are above average, making this a great PC for staying in touch with friends as well as running your software.

There’s something about the faint, almost purple tinge to the brushed metal exterior that looks a lot better than the black offered by other laptops. The metal is only an overlay, set into a plastic chassis, but in a group test full of interesting and attractive devices, the Z570 still manages to stand out. Inside, the purple coloring is offset with Lenovo’s traditional black keyboard and several backlit hotkeys.

The 15.6-inch screen is covered with a Super-TFT coating for extra color depth and isn’t interrupted by a particularly thick bezel.

However, it does wobble slightly on its hinges – although viewing angles are very good here. Because of the Super-TFT coating, the screen is reflective and in bright light these reflections were particularly noticeable. The Lenovo shares the same 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution as the other laptops here so although 1080p video is out of reach, you can still watch 720p high definition from sites like iPlayer.

Though not particularly svelte or eye-catching, the Dell Latitude E6220 ($2000 for our configuration) fits the bill for a corporate ultraportable. It’s fast, it has state-of-the-art components, and it has the warranty and service options large businesses expect. It also provides battery options that let you travel light or compute for nearly a day.

A 128GB Samsung solid-state drive, an Intel Core i5-2540M CPU, and 4GB of RAM powered our test unit to an impressive WorldBench 6 score of 132. And the integrated Intel GPU managed smooth 1080p video playback and 30 to 40 frames per second in our low-detail, low-res gaming tests.

In addition, the laptop can run for almost 7.5 hours and weighs 3.7 pounds. The ergonomics are first-class, and the bright screen has a wide viewing angle. Although lacking USB 3.0, the ports and connections are otherwise modern.

A great performer with good battery life and all the support and warranty options needed for a fleet roll-out, the E6220 is sturdily constructed, it’s up to snuff technology-wise, and overall it’s a well-designed and well-conceived business laptop.

There’s not a lot that surprises us on What Laptop Tablet & Smartphone, and when we unboxed the Novatech nSpire Black Ed 2760, we feared the worst. A flimsy chassis and the lack of style that we’ve become accustomed to on high-end laptops indicated another lackluster machine, but it appears that we were mistaken.

Under the hood is an Intel Core i7 2460M processor, which stormed our benchmark tests, scoring among the highest figures we’ve seen in our labs. This was also helped by the 8GB of RAM that makes this laptop positively sing.

Next up is the impressive nVidia GeForce 555M graphics card, which is easily capable of playing HD movies and the latest games. It got strong scores in our lab tests, and while you might not be able to play Battlefield 3 on the fullest settings, with the detail turned down, you shouldn’t have any problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of Toshiba’s laptops are truly fantastic pieces of kit. The Satellite Pro C660 isn’t one of them. It’s a long way off: the overall build quality feels cheap and although the performance and screen will satisfy basic users, we still recommend you steer well clear.

The entire machine is a black plastic construction. Although Toshiba has added a dimpled texture pattern, it fails to disguise the fact that this is a budget machine. The impression of cheapness isn’t helped by the flex around the chassis, which is at its worst around the touchpad and the optical drive. The hinges don’t feel strong, either, and the screen wobbles significantly after being adjusted.

Inside the laptop, the keyboard is packed in tightly with little travel and is slightly cramped in places – like with the diminutive return key. There is a dedicated numeric keypad to the right of the main keyboard, although there are no hotkeys anywhere on the chassis. Unfortunately, typing on the keyboard is affected by the flex and poor build quality that results in an annoying rattle during use. Read the rest of this entry »

We had to pick up our jaws from off the floor too. It’s going to take a damn sight more than a sophisticated sounding French moniker to distract you from this laptop’s gargantuan price. But this Toshiba must be an astonishing piece of kit, right?

At the very least, its battery had better be attached to a perpetual motion machine…

Designed for the busy executive who wants a laptop that doesn’t interfere with the shape of a soft Italian leather briefcase, Toshiba’s wafer thin Portege R series has long been one of the standards to beat when it comes to building a thin and light laptop. Weighing less than 1.5kg, the Toshiba still packs the fastest processor by clock speed in this test beneath its demure black casing, and promises much in the way of business enhancements for the busy traveller. Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, it’s difficult to get a handle on exactly what type of machine the N55S is. The powerful Core i7 processor, huge keyboard with numeric keypad and slab of speaker atop the keyboard suggest that it may be intended as a desktop replacement.

But the weight and general lack of bulk suggest otherwise. When all’s said and done, this is an out-and-out powerhouse of an entertainment laptop. There’s Bang and Olufsen ICEPower audio, 6GB of memory and a Blu-ray drive hidden inside that hefty case. Indeed, this is a high performance family laptop with a gaming bent -the high end Nvidia GeForce GT55M has a whopping 2GB of memory on board just for graphics, providing some of the best 3D performance you’ll find in a laptop.

While the chassis is big, it’s not as bulky as you’d think and is easily to move around the living room. Sadly the power brick isn’t so portable and is a bit of a lump. Read the rest of this entry »

It is not always that you get a laptop delivered to you in a large envelope. But HP’s Folio 13 came to us in one, and we were impressed. The package could have easily passed off for documents from a bank for a house loan—no one had inkling that it, in fact, held an Ultrabook, a rather large one at that.

Yes, the Folio 13 is slim and sleek, but not as much as some of the other Ultrabooks we have tested. That is not because this is a bulky device—at 1.5 kg it is, however, a few grams heavier than the rest. In fact, the Folio 13 tries to be true to itself by keeping its thickness constant throughout with no thinner or sleeker edges. The slightly stocky build also means this device has something which the other Ultrabooks don’t, an RJ-45 Ethernet port. To make space, the fan grill is placed beneath, unlike the others which have it on the side. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple seems to have had the monopoly on stylish looking computers for quite some time. That’s not to say there aren’t nice Windows-based PCs out there, but Apple still leads the way in design.

As we’ve come to expect from the Koreans, though, Samsung wants to compete technically and stylistically, and we think it’s done a pretty good job with the Series 9 laptop. The only problem is that the 900X not only looks as great as Apple’s devices; it attracts a premium price lag too.

For the money you get an Intel Core i5 processor running at 1,4Ghz and 4GB of RAM. Storage is handled by a 128GB SSD while the graphics is still only the Intel HD integrated functions. While the 900X is a little more expensive than the MacBook Air, it’s worth mentioning that the Samsung has a better stock configuration. The Air has a Core 2 Duo processor running at 1,8GHz, and 2GB of RAM as standard. Read the rest of this entry »

The pencil-thin bezel around the 14-inch widescreen helps make the Gateway ID47H07u one of the most portable mainstream laptops around; it weighs only 4.4 pounds. It’s also well-equipped with everything from a USB 3.0 port to Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology for cloning the PC’s screen on an HDTV.

The ID47H07u flaunts a handsome aluminum alloy lid and keyboard deck, the latter setting off the metallic chiclet-style keys. You won’t find the backlit keyboard seen on our Editors’ Choice Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5), but you’ll appreciate the smooth, precise typing feel. A plus-size touchpad has integrated—rather than dedicated—mouse buttons. They work well enough, but the pad’s plastic surface puts up a little more friction or resistance than I’m used to. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, when people think laptops and notebooks, they want something they can literally put on their laps without causing any actual stress on their thigh bones. But of course there also exist users who are much more particular about the performance of their machine. When we talk about performance however, it usually isn’t about having multiple spreadsheets open at the same time, but rather, the ability of that machine to play games. Traveling gamer, introducing your new best friend, the 17.3-inch Toshiba Qosmio X770. Read the rest of this entry »

This 13in screen Vaio Is very much the money-no-object suggestion in our round up of portables to which you might consider treating yourself this Yule, Far from a run-of-the-mill model, the Z is thinner and tighter than a MacBook Air. It’s also the first laptop to have its own dedicated multimedia dock that contains a dedicated graphics card. DVD drive and LightPeak optical connector. The Sony’s carbon-fiber frame is both incredibly strong and very light – a fact helped by the inclusion of a 256GB solid-state disk (SSD) rather than a plain old hard disk.

The laptop is powered by a Core i7 processor, paired with 4GB of RAM, Ergonomics and typing comfort are marginally compromised, but the Vaio bristles with ports and connectors. It also has a webcam and Skype support, plus a fingerprint reader to control access.

If you’re after an inexpensive laptop and are more interested in performance than a fancy name, the Packard Bell EasyNote TS1IHR039 is well worth a look. It ran away with the crown in our most recent group test of budget laptops, outshining every other contender in terms of speed. It achieves this by packing in an Intel Core i5 processor; although this is twinned with a modest 3GB of RAM, music and video plays well, although gaming isn’t great. Connections include 802.l1b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI and a trio of USB 2.0 ports. There’s a dual-layer DVD-R/RW drive and a media-card slot that takes Memory Stick and xD-Picture Cards as well as the more common SO Card format. Slight compromises in the form of integrated Intel graphics and a 500GB hard drive are our sole criticisms of this excellent and very well-priced I5.6in-screen laptop.